“Oh, honey, would you mind?” Mimi’s eyes never stopped moving, bouncing from the kitchen walls to the floor to the sink to the stove to the shelves of cookbooks. Looking for what, Becky wasn’t sure. Possibly evidence that the kitchen was doubling as a meth lab, which would prove that Becky was every bit the lowlife trailer-park queen that Mimi seemed to think she was. “I don’t suppose you’d have something for me to nibble on?” Mimi asked innocently. She rejected white bread (“I’m staying away from processed flour”), whole-wheat bread (“doesn’t agree with me”), and cantaloupe (“just never liked it”). “How about I keep an ear out for my granddaughter, and you could run to the market?”
Sure, Becky thought. How about I chop my hand off and feed it to the Rottweiler across the street? And would it kill Mimi to call Ava by her name? Possibly. Ever since the morning in the hospital, Mimi hadn’t called the baby anything except “my granddaughter” and “my grandbaby.” Never once had the name Ava crossed her lips. Maybe she was still clinging to the hope that they’d decide to call her Anna after all.
Throw her a bone, Becky told herself. “Okay. I’ll just jump in the shower first . . .”
Mimi waved her away. “We’ll be fine! Just leave me with a bottle!”
And so it begins. “We’re breast-feeding, remember?”
Mimi’s eyes widened. “Still?”
“Still,” Becky said.
“And the doctors think that’s okay?”
“It’s the best thing for her,” Becky said. “The breast milk helps her immune system develop, and—”
“Oh, that’s what they say now,” Mimi interrupted. “In my day, formula was best. And it certainly seems to have worked with Andrew!” She cut her eyes at Becky. “And I read that breast-fed babies can have problems.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “With obesity.” A merry little giggle. “Of course, my Andrew’s never had a problem there, either!”
I’m going to kill her, Becky thought with a kind of distant wonder. I really am. “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she said, hurrying up the stairs, where she stood under the shower with her eyes closed, singing “I Will Survive” until the hot water ran out.
Down in the kitchen, Mimi was at the table with the baby in her arms and a half-eaten blueberry muffin in front of her. “She had almost the whole muffin top!” she said.
“What?” Becky said.
“She’s a good eater,” Mimi announced. “Just like her daddy was.”
“Mimi! She can’t have food yet!”
“What’s that?”
Becky’s hands balled into fists. “She can’t have food until she’s four months old at the very earliest, and then just rice cereal!”
Mimi waved her hands. “Oh, I’m sure this is all right. I was feeding Andrew when he was just six weeks old, and he turned out just fine! It’s just a fad,” she prattled. “Feeding babies, not feeding babies, breast milk, formula . . . although maybe you’d know more than I do. Being in food services and all.”
Becky pressed her lips together, picked up the telephone, locked herself in the bathroom, and called her pediatrician’s office, where the very nice nurse practitioner on call told her that while a blueberry muffin might upset Ava’s tummy, it probably wouldn’t do any lasting damage. Then she walked back down the stairs.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said to Ava. Ava looked at her from Mimi’s lap, then tilted her head back. The skin underneath her chin unfolded like the pleats of an accordion. Mimi stared down in disgust.
“Oh, MAH!”
Becky peered over her mother-in-law’s shoulder at the rings of grayish-brownish schmutz in her daughter’s neck.
“Aren’t you giving her baths?” Mimi demanded.
“Of course we are, I just . . .” Becky shook her head. She had tried to wash underneath Ava’s chin, but the baby didn’t make it easy. Half the time, she wasn’t sure that Ava even had a neck. Her head seemed to fit squarely between her shoulders, and who knew what was collecting in there? Well, she did now. She grabbed a wipe from her diaper bag and handed it to Mimi.
“I honestly don’t know where that stuff came from.”
Mimi made a huffing noise.
“I’ll go to the store now,” Becky said. “Please don’t feed her anything while I’m gone.”
Another huffing noise. Becky grabbed her keys and headed out the door. When she returned, carrying two bags of Mimi-mandated groceries, her mother-in-law and baby were settled on the living-room couch. “Who’s my princess? Who is? Who is?” Ava blinked and gave a gummy grin. Becky stifled a sigh and went down to the kitchen. Five minutes later, Mimi’s voice pulled her back up the stairs.
“And now we’ll do our crunches! One! Two! One! Two! Got to look good! So all the boys will call!”
Excuse me? Becky hurried into the living room. “Mimi. Listen. I’m sure you don’t mean any harm, but Andrew and I don’t want Ava to grow up worrying about her body.”
Mimi stared at her as if Becky had just gotten out of her spaceship for her first visit to Planet Earth. “What are you talking about?”
“Crunches. Boys. We don’t want Ava to have to worry about any of that.” Becky attempted a smile. “At least not until her first birthday.”
Mimi’s lips curled into a scowl. “And Andrew agrees with this . . . this . . .” Becky could almost hear her saying nonsense. “Philosophy?” she concluded.
“One hundred percent,” Becky said and headed for the door before she succumbed to the temptation to tear Ava out of her grandmother’s arms and boot Mimi and her designer luggage back onto the street.
The backyard was Becky’s favorite part of the house. It was barely the size of a pool table, but she’d filled every inch with planters and pots in which she grew impatiens, petunias, and gerbera daisies, and the herbs and vegetables she used in the kitchen—tomatoes and cucumbers, mint and basil, sage and two kinds of parsley, even a watermelon vine. She hummed to herself as she tended to the plants, pinching off dead leaves, pulling up weeds.
Five minutes later, Mimi, with Ava in her arms, invaded her sanctuary. “Let’s see what Mommy’s doing!” she caroled, swooping Ava into the air and then down toward the ground in a manner practically guaranteed to induce spit-up within five minutes. At least that’ll get rid of the muffin, Becky thought.
“We’re watering plants!” she said, squirting water in the air, watching as Ava tried to grab for it and frowned as the spray slipped through her fingers. Then she raised her dripping hand and tried to stick her thumb in her mouth. Mimi slapped it away.
“No, no thumb-sucking! Bad girl!”
Becky turned off the hose and began to pray. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the patience not to strangle my mother-in-law, chop her into little pieces, and dump them down a sewer. “Actually, Mimi, thumb-sucking’s okay.”
“Excuse me? That can’t be right. She’ll ruin her teeth!”
“That’s an old wives’ tale,” Becky said, feeling guilty for enjoying the way Mimi flinched at the word old.
Mimi’s lips pursed. “If you’re sure,” she finally said.
“Yes, I’m positive,” Becky said, holding out her arms. “Let me change her.”
Becky carried Ava upstairs. Her diaper was dry, but she figured that one more minute of Mimi would cause her to do something she didn’t want her daughter to see.
She refastened Ava’s onesie, sank onto the rocker, and pulled up her shirt. Ava latched on eagerly. It had been less than an hour since she’d last eaten, but she seemed ravenous. Or maybe she just wanted some soothing. Mimi could put anyone on edge; why would a newborn be exempt?
Becky closed her eyes, rocking slowly, drifting into a doze as her baby nursed in her arms.
“Are you nursing?”
Becky lurched forward, jerked out of her nap. Ava’s eyes opened wide. She pulled away from the breast and started to cry.
“We were,” Becky said pointedly, pulling he
r shirt down, patting Ava’s back until she belched.
“Oh, excuse YOU!” Mimi said.
Becky wiped the baby’s pursed pink lips with the corner of a receiving blanket and snuggled Ava against her. It’s the best feeling in the world, her own mother had said the first time she’d held Ava. Becky hadn’t believed her then—she’d been so scared of hurting the baby, who seemed like such a fragile, floppy thing that she’d start sweating before every diaper change. But now that Ava was holding her head up better, looking around and noticing things, now that she’d gotten over her baby acne, Becky loved to hold her. Ava’s skin was soft and sweet-smelling, her long-lashed gray-blue eyes and full pink lips the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. She could spend hours kissing the back of Ava’s neck or nuzzling her head, still completely bald, the skin so pale that she could trace the veins that ran beneath it.
“We’re going to take a little nap,” Becky told Mimi. Without waiting for a response, she settled the baby into her crib and went to the bedroom, where she slipped off her shoes, pulled down the shades, and gazed at the skylight she and Andrew had installed during the halcyon days before Mimi had moved to town. She called Andrew’s office, then his cell phone, and when he didn’t answer either one, she did the thing she’d long resisted, the thing she despised Mimi for doing with such regularity. She paged him. Yes, please, could you ask him to call home? No, no, not an emergency. It’s just his wife. Thirty seconds later, the phone was ringing. Becky lunged for it. She was fast, but Mimi was faster.
“Andrew! What a nice surprise!”
“Hi, Mom. Is Becky there?”
“I imagine,” Mimi purred. “But don’t you have a minute to talk to your old mom?”
Becky hung up the phone and balled her hands into fists. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change . . . Ten minutes later, Mimi was screaming up the stairs. “BeckEEEE! My son wants to talk to you!”
The baby started crying. “Tell him I’ll call him back,” Becky called, and went into Ava’s room, where she spent ten minutes easing the baby back into sleep. When she called Andrew’s cell phone again, he picked it up.
“How are things?”
“Not good,” Becky said.
“Is she being impossible?”
“Well, let’s see. So far she’s fed our daughter a blueberry muffin, woken her up from her nap, slapped her thumb out of her mouth . . .”
“What?” Andrew sounded properly incredulous. Becky relaxed into the pillows. He’s on our side, she reminded herself. On my side. Not on hers.
“She gave stomach crunch instructions so that the boys will call . . .”
“She said this to the baby?”
“Well, she didn’t say it to me, now, did she?”
Andrew sighed. “Do you want me to come home? I’ve got . . .” Becky could hear him reaching for his schedule. “A hip replacement I’m scrubbing in on at three, but I could have Mira cover for me.”
“No, no, you go replace your hip. I just needed to vent.”
“I’m sorry, Becky,” Andrew said. “Hang in there.”
“I’ll try,” she said and hung up the phone. Back in the nursery, Ava was on her side, and Mimi was leaning over the crib in a replay of the first morning in the hospital, black hair dangling, nose roughly six inches from Ava’s. Becky couldn’t see her expression, but Mimi’s pose made her think about cats who’d suck the breath out of sleeping babies. Her hands formed fists; her short nails dug into the flesh of her palms. Get away, she wanted to scream. Get away from my baby, you crazy lady!
“She’s so perfect,” Mimi whispered.
Becky’s hands unclenched. Horrible as she was, Mimi at least had it right about Ava. “She is, isn’t she?” she whispered back.
“I always wanted a little girl,” Mimi said. “But I had two miscarriages after Andrew, and the doctors said no more for me.”
Becky felt her heart melt. Ava’s eyelids fluttered as she slept. “Her eyelashes are so pale,” Mimi whispered. “I wonder how she’d look with a little mascara?”
Becky felt her heart reconstitute itself. “We should let her sleep,” she said. She held the door pointedly open until Mimi gave up and followed her back down the stairs.
Back in the living room, Becky deployed her secret weapon. “Would you like some wine?”
Mimi did. Two glasses of Chablis and a remote-control handoff later, Becky was free. “We’re just going for a little walk!” she called, knowing as she carried the stroller down the stairs that Mimi wouldn’t join them. Her four-inch heels tended to preclude recreational strolling. Becky decided to see if Lia was home. Lia would help her keep things in perspective. Not even Screaming Mimi was so bad when you considered what Lia had lost.
It had been a week since she’d met Lia, and they’d had coffee once, in the park, conducting the kind of getting-to-know-you conversation that felt a little like a bad blind date until Becky had got Lia going on her secret addiction—Hollywood gossip. After only an hour with Lia, Becky knew more about who was gay in Hollywood and who was merely a Scientologist than she’d learned after decades of Access: Hollywood. She’d asked about movie stars; Lia had asked about her friends and their babies. A fair trade, Becky thought.
She pushed Ava around the perimeter of the park, into the lobby of Lia’s building, and had the doorman call up to her apartment. “Want to go for a walk?” she asked. Lia walked out of the elevator wearing a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans that had to date back to her high school days. Her two-toned hair was tucked tidily underneath a Phillies baseball cap, but she looked uncomfortable as she darted a glance at the stroller, then looked quickly away. Becky reached for her cell phone. “Let’s see if Kelly and Ayinde are around.” She paused, feeling uncomfortable. “That is . . . I mean . . .” She looked at Lia, biting her lip. “Do you not want to be around other babies?”
“No, it’s okay,” Lia said. She shoved her hands in her pockets and gave a small shrug. “The world is full of babies. It doesn’t bother me much. Not if the babies belong to people I know. It’s just that sometimes . . .” She touched Ava’s cheek. “Sometimes it’s hard,” she said softly. “When it feels like everyone except you has a baby that isn’t going to die.”
Becky swallowed hard. “We can just walk around the park,” she said. “We can get some coffee.”
“No, no.” Lia shook her head. “I want to meet your friends.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Half an hour later, Ava was napping in her stroller, and Becky, Ayinde, and Lia were sitting on a horrific orange-and-brown-plaid couch in Kelly’s formerly vacant living room. Oliver, who appeared to have doubled in size since his birth, was lying underneath his Gymini, chewing on one drooly fist. And Kelly, dressed in what looked like her old maternity workout wear, was talking on her telephone’s headset, keeping one eye on her baby and one on her computer screen.
“Paul, let me make sure I understand,” she said. She smiled at Becky and Ayinde, beamed at the babies, and nodded at Lia, who’d whispered her name. “There was a typhoon? And that’s why the candles are still in Thailand? Well, what’s our contingency plan?” She listened, frowning, tapping a pen against her desk. “So we have no contingency plan. And there’s no candle in the entire tristate region that would be acceptable. Right. Yes. Yes, I’ll wait.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and made a face. “This is why I don’t do weddings,” she whispered, as someone—Paul, presumably—started screaming on the other end of the phone. “Paul. Paul. PAUL! Listen to me! We are talking about centerpieces, not the AIDS vaccine. I really don’t think a call to the consulate is going to get us anywhere. What I suggest you do is start calling suppliers in New York. I can fax you a list, and I’ll put stars next to the best bets. Pick out half a dozen candles in the same color palette. I’ll stop over in the morning, and we’ll speak to the bride together. Right. Yes. Ten o’clock. Right. Okay, I’ll see you then.” She hung up the phone and sank onto the floor where she sat cross-legged bes
ide her baby and her sleeping dog.
“Oh my God!” she said, staring up at Lia. “You’re famous!”
“Well, not exactly,” Lia said with a smile. She pointed to the phone. “That sounded interesting.”
“Are you working?” Becky asked.
“Agh. Not exactly,” Kelly said. “My former boss had an emergency, and I told her I’d help out. The bride fell in love with these candles from Thailand. Unfortunately, three hundred of them are stuck in a boat in a harbor because of a typhoon. They won’t be here in time for her wedding.”
“So what happens now?” Becky asked.
“Bad things,” said Kelly. She lifted Oliver into her arms, rolled onto her back, and started pressing the baby over her head. Oliver’s pudgy legs dangled, and his hands opened and closed as his mother pumped him up and down. “The noble duke of York,” Kelly chanted. “He had ten thousand men! He marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again!”
Ayinde looked at her watch. “Can I borrow your crib?” she asked.
“Go . . . right . . . ahead,” Kelly said between presses.
“He doesn’t even look sleepy!” Becky said.
Ayinde shrugged apologetically, scooped Julian into her arms, and carried him to the nursery.
“Don’t mind her; she’s joined the cult,” Becky whispered to Lia. “Priscilla Prewitt. Ever heard of her? She’s Ayinde’s guru. Ayinde’s got Julian’s entire life scheduled in five-minute increments, and . . .” She looked at Kelly. “Are you exercising?” she demanded, as Kelly continued to loft Oliver into the air.
“Triceps,” Kelly grunted and rested the baby on her chest.
“Well, you’re a better woman than I am,” Becky said. Lemon snuffled at Oliver’s head. Ayinde tiptoed back into the room.
“If I don’t lose ten pounds, I won’t be able to fit into any of my clothes,” Kelly said. “And I can’t afford a new wardrobe.”
Steve, in shorts and a T-shirt and bare feet, walked into the living room. “Can I get any of you ladies some lunch?”
Kelly was so lucky, Becky thought. She’d kill to have Andrew home for a day. He could bring her lunch, and take the baby for a walk, and help her get through the five baskets of laundry that seemed to have accumulated overnight. While Steve took salad orders, Kelly set Oliver back underneath his Gymini and started walking on the treadmill with five-pound weights in each hand.
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